it's just another ghost story
by xshedreamsinredx
Summary: Klaus/Rebekah. Post 1x16. Everyone else isn't you. It turns out that's a huge problem for me.


**Characters: **Klaus/Rebekah  
**Fandom: **The Vampire Diaries, The Originals.**  
Warning: **Half-sibling incest and mild sexual content**.  
Notes: **This is Rebekah-centric, post 1x16 episode of The Originals. A future fic, if you will. I hope this is not as ridiculous as it looks to me. Or terribly OOC. Know that I worked my ass off not to make it look like that. It's quiet depressing that Claire Holt left the show and I just had to get this out.

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**it's just another ghost story**

"_Wouldn't we be quite the pair?—  
you with your bad heart,  
me with my bad head.__"_

_._

_._

_._

When all is said and done, Rebekah packs her bags and leaves.

Staying in New Orleans is no longer an option and the thought of wasting her time on another man who isn't hers to love holds little appeal for her. So she procures a new identity, dies her hair brown and runs from the States even though she knows there is no point in doing it anymore, her brother is too busy to be following her.

It's an odd sort of freedom or maybe it is odd because it's freedom. She can't tell the difference half of the time.

.

.

.

She takes great care not to leave a trail behind, gets into this impossible habit of turning around again and again to see if anyone is tracing her footsteps.

It is the most ridiculous thing she has ever done, most ridiculous she has ever been because she is a _freaking_ original, she can catch even the slightest of sounds from miles afar, and her eyes can detect the slightest of movements before a person has even thought them out properly.

She takes to travelling around, goes to all the places she can think of, the places she has never been to before on her own.

.

.

.

She visits the ancient ruin of Hera's temple in Greece, goes trekking in the snowy Himalayas with a bunch of teenagers, and gets lost among the tourists packed cobblestoned streets of Italy.

And every so often, she is mindful enough to stop and send Hayley wordless postcards from the middle of nowhere, stops herself short of asking after the daughter that could have been hers in another lifetime, keeps the wolf girl in the loop. She had formed somewhat of a close knit bond with her.

_Elijah would be proud of her, Nik would-_

She can't even get herself to complete the thought without feeling sick.

.

.

.

She settles down in London after a year of wandering around aimlessly from place to place. It is as peaceful a city as it is gloomy. She quite likes it.

She compels her way into college, fits right in with the crowd and is the middle of her art history class one day when she gets the call.

"Hello?

There is silence on the other end. No one speaks for a while. And in her bones, she just knows it's him.

"She looks a bit like you from the right angle."

Air chases out of her lungs almost violently and she feels tired all of a sudden, he has always had this ability to drain her out without meaning to. She lets her head drop in her hands, clutches on to the phone harder still. "Nik."

His name sounds foreign on her tongue, it has more weariness in it than it used to. She picks up on the spaces between his carefully plucked consonants and feels her sanity slip past the space between her fingers, as easy as silt. "I just wanted you to know that's all."

"Nik, _Nik." S_he is pleading.

"Don't do this to me," she doesn't need to say.

He lets go off the line on the other side, she keeps holding on.

.

.

.

In fall, she falls in love again, hard and fast. His name is Jordan and he has a daughter no older than three to take care of all by himself. He'd lost his wife to terminal illness a year before and she feels for him because she knows what loss of that sort feels like, what it can do to you. She was built to fix everything broken and he is the very definition of that. He speaks of his daughter on their very first date and stops being sad for just about enough time to make her smile.

By the end of winter, he asks her to move in with him and she doesn't even have to think twice before accepting. She'd wanted a white picket fence and children running around the house even in the daily life of undead.

This is the dream family she had prayed for.

This is the dream family she_ is_ getting.

.

.

.

It's in April that he finds her.

One day, she's returning home from a long day at college when she discovers him waiting for her, leaning back casually against the door of her apartment. A slow smile spreads on his face at the sight of her stricken reaction and she can't bring her head to comprehend what just happened.

"Hello sister." He lets his eyes rake up and down the length of her body in a manner that he knows makes her skin crawl.

She stands still, unmoving, too stunned to say anything. Her hands clench into fists slowly, unsurely. She forces a step back and knows she should have known that this has been a long time incoming. "Klaus."

The lazy smile on his face stretches even more, if at all possible, he seems pleased to see that she still tries to match his cruelty with her own at times. There's still some fight left in her even after all these years. "Did my invitation get lost in the mail?"

The ring on her finger weighs her down and she suddenly feels afraid watching him move away from the door to stalk to the spot right in front of her. She clears out her throat, tries to hold on to her sanity a little while longer. "We haven't sent out the invitations yet."

"Is that so?" his index finger taps his chin in a grand 'gesture' of deliberation yet there is nothing to account for the relief in his eyes apart from the obvious. "Were you planning to invite me?"

She juts her chin out, stubbornly, tries to step back but he grabs her by wrist, stopping her short. "Were you?"

"Would you believe me if I said yes?" She struggles, like a rabid animal, to tug herself free. He doesn't have any power over her here. She is not that girl anymore.

"Maybe, depends if you have gotten any better at lying than the last time." He tightens his grip, gnashes her bones together effortlessly. It will, leave a bruise in the shape of his fingers behind, refuse to fade for a couple of hours.

"Why are you really here, Nik?" She gives up the pretence, gives up the forced bravado. He always has been Nik to her even when he was Klaus. It's pathetic, frankly.

She lets herself ease up a bit in his hold, stares up at him from under her eyelashes.

Nik smirks down at her, a little bit of fang, a little bit of blood. "Can't I come visit my favourite girl?" He doesn't get to call her that. He doesn't get to _fucking_ call her that. "See what a good Samaritan she has grown into?" He relaxes his grasp into languid strokes against her skin. _It is distracting_. "Playing the housekeeper to a middle aged man and the doting mother to a child that is not hers," she can't steel herself nearly enough to not flinch at his words. "I leave you alone for roughly three years, _sister_, and this is what becomes of you?"

"Don't you dare hurt him, Nik." She is not in a position to be making demands but that has never stopped her from trying before. "That girl needs her father."

"I wasn't planning to, sister." He drops his hand from her wrist, acts offended. With the pressure gone, she feels disconcerted. There is no force to keep her from collapsing against him anymore. "But continuing with your line of logic that girl certainly _doesn't_ need you. Does she know you are the monster under the bed from the late night stories you read to her?"

She thinks she can hit back at him, say things he doesn't want to hear about the hypocrisy of his statements. He is a father now; she can aim with her words for his heart and strike a nerve not too far from it. She could get even if she wants, be as cruel as he has always been. "I am tired, Nik. Just… just go away from here."

Unbidden tears spring to her eyes and he looks away from her. For some reason, he deigns to let it slide.

Perhaps he is as insane as she is. Perhaps even more.

He nods silently, steps away from her to thunder his way down the stairs. "I'll be keeping in touch."

Jordan finds her huddled against the door, crying. Instead of asking her any questions, he picks her up and carries her inside. She is glad; she doesn't have any real answers for anyone who isn't her own blood.

.

.

.

It is a June wedding, a small gathering with some of her friends from college and a few relatives of his.

She stands in front of the mirror, looks at her reflection and fancies the notion that she is not seeing herself at all. In the periphery of her vision, she can see him pick up her veil and finger the thin material, as uninvited as he is.

"The virginal bride," he sneers from the far off corner, his voice a stark echo in her head. "Isn't that a bit farfetched?"

"Shut up, Nik." She says because she doesn't have anything else to. It is as sad as it is fitting. Her hand trace nervous pattern over the skirt of her gown, fidget with material to make it look impossibly straightened. She needs something to occupy her fingers with.

And, she knows the exact second he's behind her. Fingers dancing on the edge of her bare shoulder, he presses in close. "But you do paint a pretty picture, sister, I will hand you that. A vision in _white_."

She breathes out a bit more forcefully than necessary, doesn't push him away just the same. He reaches out from behind, coils his fingers along the underside of her chin and tugs it in place so as to prevent her from looking away. "I never thought I'd see the day to see you get married, never thought I'd allow it."

She watches him in the reflection, something manic shaping the blue of his eyes. He is curved over her. His breath is heavy on the back of her neck, and his lips are placed at the shell of her ear, barely touching. "It's not too late to change my mind though. Is it?"

Her mouth is a graveyard full of words that refuse to form, the fabric of her gown stretches achingly between them and just for a lost fraction of eternity she wonders what it would be like to rip it apart just to see if she can. _"Nik."_

"I can stop the time; steal you away from his memories." He lets his hand ghost down to her shoulder, and tugs her around insistently, pins her against the back of the mirror with brutal force. "Erase every moment of your time together." The mirror splinters, gives away, under his callous display. Shards of glass dig into her back and she feels blood form at the surface of her skin and ooze, he'd meant to stain her dress. "It will be as if you never existed." He explains. His voice softer somehow, comforting. "Always and forever, love. Just like you wanted."

"Then do it if that's what you want." Pain courses through her entire back, makes her tremble in his mockery of an embrace. Her brain shuts down with the impact of it. "Do it."

He drops in his head close to hers, watches tears sting her eyes. A maddening, self-satisfied smile blooms on his face.

It only serves to make her hysterical.

"Too easy," He says almost affectionately, lifts a hand to wipe the stray tears on her cheek. And then he kisses her, bruising and unforgiving. He did always have a penchant for being a bit of a bastard.

She forces herself to pull away from him slightly, hands on the either side of his shoulder, her mouth a beat away from his. He smiles indulgently, cradles her face in his palm in a cruel parody of a gentle caress. "Nik, _don't_," do this, she means to say but her words come out all jumbled when she speaks, "..._don't stop_."

He buries his face in the dip of her collarbone, drags his hands over the fabric of her gown, and slides it up and up and up, till it bunches around her hips. His lips blaze across her skin, insistently, and she can feel his smug smile singe her flesh. It makes her throat catch the edge of a moan.

He hoists her up against him and she _hates_ herself for being so weak, curls her legs around him, and thinks they haven't done this in the longest time.

He fucks her in her wedding dress and she lets him.

.

.

.

He takes to the habit of sending her elaborate flower arrangements accompanied by congratulatory cards on her wedding anniversaries. She in turn, takes it upon herself to dump them all in the trash can.

Hindsight is 50/50.

.

.

.

Following her graduation, she gets a job at the local newspaper. She cooks the meals in the morning for her husband, adopts his daughter as her own, and takes her out to play in the park in evening.

For a while, she is happy with her life. It's the best she has ever had and Rebekah did always strive for the best, even when it concerned normalcy and stability.

It all seems to be going well until one night he comes home much too late, smelling of cheap whisky and another woman's perfume. The betrayal tastes bitter in her mouth. _She didn't even see that one coming._

So they fight about it, loud and jarring, her teeth ache with this familiar hunger but she doesn't give in to it. She is more human than monster these days.

Kol would have rolled in his grave had they buried him in one.

Jordan ends up leaving in the middle of the night. Rebekah, she, doesn't know what to do.

.

.

.

"Nik, he came home too late-"

"I should have known better-"

"I wanted to kill him-"

"He is gone, he left me-"

"I can't stand to be alone here-"

No matter how many sentences she leaves open-ended, his answer is the same. A forcibly calm lilt to his voice, he tells her. "I'm coming to get you, Rebekah."

(The accident is all over the local news channels in the morning, she doesn't know what to make of it.)

.

.

.

The thing is she is terrible in dealing with death. She hates wearing black clothes in mourning, hates the finality they are associated with, hates the stupid condolences that people feel inclined to pay her when they don't even have an iota of insight into her feelings.

She cries at the funeral, buries her head in Nik's chest and sobs fitfully because she doesn't know what else to do.

"I kill every man I love." She murmurs against his clavicle, hot tears drip down her nose. She half hopes he doesn't hear her.

He holds her close in response, burrows one hand in her hair and brushes a chaste kiss to her forehead. "You offer yourself too much credit, sister," she feels his lips at her ear now, his arm wound tight around her waist.

He lets out a low, hollow chuckle. "I kill every man you love."

And isn't that the truth of it.

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.

.

"Come home, Rebekah." Nik demands when he finds her alone, tugs her to a corner of the living room. Anyone watching wouldn't buy him for her brother.

She yanks her hand back from his, shoves at him with much unnecessary force, and sticks out her chin. "I'm home."

"Resign being so stubborn, sister," he sighs impatiently, pursues his lips in contempt. She half expects him to stick a dagger in between her ribs. Knows, Nik thinks himself a golden god and gods never get reduced to pleading. "Your place is with me in New Orleans. Not in the house of a man who wasn't even worth half your time."

She recoils as if he has struck her. "No," she says, watches him look even more unimpressed by her resistance, "you told me I could never come back. Remember?"

"It was said in a fit of anger," he justifies, a low growl ripping from the base of his throat. He is not good with patience either."I didn't mean it." He takes a step towards her. "Enough with this nonsense already. Go pack your bags, Rebekah. We are going home."

"It's not my home, Nik," she insists for reasons she doesn't understand. Maybe she just wants to see him drop on his feet before her, see him beg.

"It could be." His eyes soften a bit.

He looks a lot like the brother she knew him to be.

"I _can't_," she says, an inflection surfacing in her voice. _It's not the same thing as not wanting to_. "He would have wanted me to take care of his daughter. I can't leave her alone."

He shuts his eyes, pulls her closer still. The sharp angles of his bones dig into her ribs. "Take her with you if you must. I will raise her along with my own."

She gravitates towards him, allows herself to collapse into him in an affirmation of something she doesn't have a definition for. It is easier than she'd imagined it. "Why?"

"I thought it is obvious sister," she hates him for his silence, hates him for letting her go, hates him for not stopping her all those years ago, "we made a pact," he says, lets her rest her head against his shoulder. "Always and forever."

He echoes those words from a distant memory, damns them both all over again. Only this time she knows he'd rather kill her than let her go.

She finds it almost flattering.

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**fin.**

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**End Notes: **Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I enjoyed writing it. I'd really appreciate it if you could take a few seconds out of your precious time and leave me a review, tell me whether you liked it or hated it. O̶r̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶c̶u̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶k̶l̶e̶b̶e̶k̶a̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶r̶u̶i̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶l̶i̶v̶e̶s̶.̶


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